
i^Hli^HKBi 



I 





'\:IP;/ °v^v '°%:^'/ °V»' 



^j'^^-V' v^v v^^-y v*^^* 















v^-> %^^*/ v^*/ %^^^ 










.--0' .^^ 






''^^o^ 





<^ ••*•• <v 




/..iJ^-A ./..;;iik-\ c°*..;ss^.>o ^/\.- 



















>^..jl:^% ^^ 








'oK 















4- A^ < 






^cpv 



**'% 






.4q 



»^ ,0 1 



^^6* 



^ V'^v' %^^^*/ V^^*/ %*^ 









• '^^ ^^ ♦v 






HEFORM AND REPEAL, 



A SERMON 



PREACHED ON FAST-DAY, APEIL C, 1854. 



LEGAL ANARCHY, 

A SERMON 

PREACHED ON JUNE 4, 1854, 

AFTER THE RENDITION OF ANTHONY BURNS. 

By JOHN WEISS. 



BOSTON: 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 

111 Washington Street. 
185 4. 



£74-50 



'FLA MGK 
OorueU U'iiiV, 
< fLH05 



CAMBRIDGE: 
METCALF AND COMPANY, TKINTEKS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



■X 



REFORM AND REPEAL. 



To WHAT PURPOSE IS THE MULTITUDE OF TOUR SACRIFICES TO ME"? 8AITH 

THE Lord Wash te, make tou clean : put awat the evil of 

TOUR DOINGS FROM BEFORE MINE EYES ; CEASE TO DO EVIL, LEARN 
TO DO WELL ; SEEK JUDGMENT, RELIEVE THE OPPRESSED. — Isaiah 1. 11, 
16,17. 

If we consent to notice at all the day which the Execu- 
tive appoints for a Public Fast, we should do it without 
reservation, in a religious spirit, and moved by conscien- 
tious desires to make a full exposure and statement of our 
delinquencies. A Fast is either a conventional support 
given to an ancient usage, whose foundation in the popu- 
lar sentiment has crumbled away ; or it is a solemn oppor- 
tunity, deliberately embraced by men who are willing to 
grant their imperfection, to take counsel together in an 
atmosphere that is not vitiated by party feeling and that 
usually transmits the expressions of Christian faith. Our 
presence here forbids the suspicion that a day for public 
confession of sin may be hypocritically proclaimed and in 
the same mind observed. We are serious in our attend- 
ance here ; we know that sins exist, and direct infractions 
of Christian law, and that we are not entirely irresponsible. 
We neither come to make confession of sin a public enter- 
tainment, or a brief moral excitement for the private con- 



science, which shall be satisfied with empty feeling. It is 
to refresh our sense of Christian justice and morality, to 
contrast our methods of government and legislation with 
absolute principles, and to rekindle our hatred of oppres- 
sion, of compromise, of political and moral servitude, that 
we are here. 

In the presence of God, and in the act of worship, we 
forbear to indulge in any imputation of bad motives, or in 
personal indignation levelled against persons. We observe 
results, we deal with principles, we contrast the effects of 
associated action with the eternal sentiments of the Gos- 
pel. And if we find a principle of Divine equity, or a rule 
of common morals and decency, violated, we proclaim it 
because we reverence what is just, we confess it because 
we know that we are implicated in all the public manifes- 
tations which create government and carry on the life of a 
country. We dare not enter into the question of motives ; 
we can only expose a corrupt level of sentiment. Men 
may live on such a level unconsciously, and may share its 
immoral actions in mechanical obedience to legal requi- 
sitions, out of gregarious instincts, and from lack of the 
highest enlightenment. Among other public evils, we find 
this coarse and oppressive one of assumption of criminal 
intent ; and it is no better when combined with vindica- 
tion of principles than when it is used against principle to 
eke out a defence of wrong. Moreover, the amount of 
character to be defamed may be great or little, but the sin 
of defamation is equally great in all cases, because impar- 
tial and unerring judgment is not within the capacity of 
man, even when all the lights of knowledge guide him, and 
his passions sleep ; least of all when he is thinking and 
speaking in the dust of a conflict, stimulated by pressing 



exigencies, hurt in his feelings, touched in his self-esteem, 
ruled by his sect or party. This is a great evil, and we are 
responsible for it, because we confine neither our tongue 
nor our heart in strict obedience to principles, but let them 
indulge in personalities ; and when we fight, our vanity 
feels as much compromised as our conscience. There are 
degrees of defamation and depths of brutality ; and when 
we see an extreme case, we indulge our outraged sensi- 
bilities. But for that very case we are responsible ; for 
God has so involved us in a common life, that moder- 
ate expressions of passion countenance and nourish vio- 
lent expressions of it ; the imputation of a selfish motive 
couched in genteel phrases stimulates an imputation that 
is chopped out coarsely, with little regard to the blandness 
of art. A careless retort begets a brutal answer. It is 
simphj the tendency to personal and partisan judgments 
that is accountable for the worst of them ; and if a man is 
disposed to worship the impartiality of the Saviour, who 
showed us that it is practicable to unite sternness of prin- 
ciples with charity for persons, he will be equally disgusted, 
wherever he looks over the steaming plain of public life, 
equally repelled to see passion and selfishness alive under 
all banners, whether their mottoes are political or moral, 
equally discouraged to see men vitiate their principles with 
imputations and unbridled speech. And this is one mani- 
festation of public depravity, and one characteristic of the 
national life, which we confess and mourn to-day. As we 
then proceed in this self-examination, let us arraign no in- 
dividuals before the bar of our imperfect judgment; but 
rather take notice of results and phenomena, and proclaim 
their evil. 

It is high time that the people of this country should scru- 



tinize more closely the methods by which important acts of 
legislation are discharged. If we say that the two branches 
of Congress faithfully represent the people, we shall be 
justified in saying that transactions, which are called by 
courtesy legislation, are signs of public depravity ; and that 
we are responsible for them, because we do not think it of 
sufficient consequence to purge and renovate the national 
councils by a sterner and more religious stock of men. 
These transactions occur under the ascendency of both 
parties ; without them it is supposed to be impossible to 
carry on the government, whatever policy may reign. 
Between parties there may be a difference of degree in 
this respect, one being less venal and notorious than the 
other ; but that is all. When the representatives of the 
people arrive at the head of government, and become ini- 
tiated into the routine of business, they seem to tacitly 
admit all the corrupt traditions of the place, and make no 
combined and uncompromising effort to abolish them for 
ever. Some admit them with personal complicity, others 
with indifference. No honorable attempt is made by the 
majority to do business without them. No league of puri- 
tans in love with justice resists and breaks the evil charm. 
It is a sign of great public depravity when men are unwill- 
ing to view a measure dispassionately, as the sworn ser- 
vants of the people, confining themselves to its intrinsic 
merits, intent upon promoting the highest good alone, 
unbiased by their secret necessities. It shows how great 
a body of the people are unconcerned for a scrupulous 
morality in those whom they elect, when not a bill of im- 
portance can acquire vitality without the influence of a 
supplementary congress of committees flush of money, 
and agents expressly delegated to manufacture votes; 



when companies of men can in this way reap enormous 
profits by the success of their projects ; when speculation 
can swell and thrive upon grants of land almost fabu- 
lous for enterprises that are never expected to be com- 
pleted, or that demand estimates far more economical; 
when one bill cannot pass until it is made a subject of 
barter, and balanced by another bill ; when, in fine, every 
avenue that leads to the sacred centre where the firm and 
pure lawgivers ought to sit in calm deliberation, is be- 
sieged and choked by the men who think it right to pick 
up their living between the selfishness of those without 
and the selfishness of those within, whose faith is that 
every man has his price and that every measure is a mar- 
ketable thing. Are we ready to confess that this repre- 
sents the country ; that the life which rests so proudly upon 
the common school and the corner-stones of ten thousand 
churches culminates into this display of unconscious vul- 
garity and corruption ; that private justice, led through the 
artificial channels of party, becomes public wrong by the 
time it reaches its outlets ; that personal honesty is at last 
represented by official corruption ? And we are told that 
the conflicting interests of the national life admit no remedy. 
More than this; some people deliberately acknowledge, 
that, if a man would have any influence at the Capitol 
beyond the details belonging to his district, he must be a 
good shot, and all the better fitted to maintain his posi- 
tion and command attention if he understands the arts of 
the pugilist and has the unconquerable brain of the toper! 
If a man considers that he is put down, and politically 
annihilated, unless he retorts the fierce invective which 
seeks to stay his course, and is forced in turn to handle the 
popular weapons of intimidation, then the public integrity, 



which the school and church are said to foster, is respon- 
sible to displace him by a man who fears God, a tranquil 
patriot, unseduced by the blandishments and unmoved by 
the violence of disappointed opponents. It ought to be 
the settled purpose of religious minds to give their power 
to men who remember the sincerity of the early days of 
the republic, and who do not submit to the delusion that 
the complicated interests of the present and the great 
development of various energies demand corruption in the 
ante-room, or vulgarity and unmanly deference and weak 
compromises upon the floor. The place which has been 
so desecrated by the presence of our coarsest traits and our 
most imperfect culture, where men emerge who have 
strength and tact without the refinement of religion, and 
who, having been trained to regard nothing but expe- 
diency, force their policy upon us in every department of 
the common life, ought to be swept clean ; the Cromwell 
of indignant conscience ought to interrupt the low-minded 
debate, and scatter the creatures of the hour, never again 
to vex that sacred air with their confusion. Moral sense 
and Christian faith should make a league, and purge that 
place, and sweep its avenues clear of the agents of selfish- 
ness, and re-establish patriotism within, and support with 
mighty constancy the men who will test all things by jus- 
tice and by principle, — support them, insist upon them, 
return them again and again, urge them as the living pro- 
tests of outraged sentiment against everything that is less 
than magnanimous and righteous. Let the clear air of an 
awakened North, that has memories of ancestral virtue, 
and is converted by the Gospel, arise, and blow among 
those pillars, and sound in earnest beneath those domes, 
and blow, till every vestige of the present disorder is swept 



9 

out to oblivion, with its vicious rhetoric and its paltry- 
stratagems; let it blow till the place becomes so sweet 
that it shall seem not amiss if the sincere dignity of the 
forefathers should rise there again, to utter the words which 
savor of Christian traditions, and recall the profligate re- 
public to the cleanliness of its youth. Make it again a 
spot where religious faith may direct and modify personal 
ambition, and the character of the Saviour may be remem- 
bered well enough, at least to unfold there a higher con- 
sciousness, if not to inaugurate his holiest thoughts. 

There is a theory which is beginning to obtain some 
credence, that the country will suffer nothing from public 
abuses and the errors of legislation. We are supposed to 
possess the recuperative power of a vigorous nature, which 
repels contagion and throws off disease, leaving all its vital 
functions undecayed. It is said that the capacity of the 
country is one thing, and the action of government an- 
other : however vicious the latter may be, the former trans- 
acts its business undisturbed, stretches its sinews in defiance 
of the threads of evil policy, and goes on its way conquer- 
ing and rejoicing, entirely absorbed in realizing all its fer- 
vent tendencies. Some even maintain that one advantage 
secured by a democratic form of government can be seen 
in the facility with which security and happiness are pre- 
served independently of any kind of legislation. The gross 
indulgences which the body politic absorbs and carries off 
would destroy a less elastic and reliant people. "What a 
delusion is this, which could only be originated by conceit 
and unreflecting energy ! It is the argument of an inde- 
fatigable Messalina. The vigorous youth may boast of 
the number of bottles he can carry off without a headache 
or the loss of a single hour on the morrow. Great is the 
2 



10 

ability of rugged youth to bear the wrongs which indul- 
gence must inevitably inflict; elasticity will conceal the 
ravages of vice, till its overtasked instinct can tolerate the 
folly no longer, and the hour arrives when Nature claims 
her just revenge. Then the shaken frame trembles after 
every pleasure, and the impotent and paralytic close im- 
pends. So is the republic presuming upon the recupera- 
tive power of its youth ; with one hand it lifts the cup of 
profligate enjoyment, and with the other drives its free ac- 
tivities and releases expanding destiny from all constraint. 
And what is this engrossing ambition but itself a kind of 
profligate enjoyment, which hardens and corrupts the 
nation as surely as it does the man ? Let us not be mis- 
led because we see that youth has also generous impulses, 
and develops much that is good. Vice nevertheless dis- 
organizes. What is to make a republic independent of 
the law of God which causes misery to spring from folly ? 
The world's history is nothing but God's commentary 
upon the text, "He that sows the wind shall reap the 
whirlwind." What undiscovered quality of nature repeals 
in our favor that text, and permits us to violate holy mor- 
als, superior to penalties ? Will the vast extent of unoc- 
cupied ground, where migrating millions can settle and 
prosper, preserve health and virtue merely because it can 
keep up an animal content? Can the conscience and 
soul of the republic escape from justice on the broad, rolling 
territories where crops will grow in spite of evil laws? 
Will this popular absorption in the material interests of 
the continent divorce us from the effects of our own legis- 
lation, make the spu-it of the country irresponsible, compen- 
sate for violations of justice ? If the republic itself is not 
to settle with God for republican corruption, what shall 



11 

settle with God, or what is the invention by which this 
supple nation proposes to remove the sting from national 
indulgence, and to establish a new species of Providence 
in this hemisphere ? Look for the root of this monstrous 
illusion in the popular idea of success. Because bad laws 
do not seem to interfere with money-making, — because 
the corrupt influences at the seat of government do not 
stay the printing-press, nor suspend the clink in navy yards 
and factories, nor prevent hospitals and colleges from being 
founded, — because habits of public profligacy do not im- 
pede, but rather accelerate, private and corporate enter- 
prises, and the railroad usurps the track of the buffalo, and 
the new city springs full-grown out of barrenness, — be- 
cause, in one word, youth may still continue to be youthful 
and enthusiastic, and health may laugh at croaking antiq- 
uity, — therefore the republic may be badly managed, and 
the national conscience set at an imperfect standard, and 
the numerous channels of public life may transmit the bad 
influence across the w^hole surface, with impunity. That 
it does not do so, be convinced, even now, in the hour of 
energy : see the retribution even now commenced in men- 
tal servihty, in moral indifference, in obsequious political 
enthusiasm, in acquiescence in the existence and the effects 
of slavery. See the absolute principles of Jesus denied by 
the platforms of parties, who invariably accept what has 
been enacted, oblivious that they ever remonstrated and 
appealed. Is this success ? Is this the maturity of power 
and vigor upon which we enter? It is rather the first 
touch of avenging paralysis. Let us return to temperance 
and chastity. 

Yes, we have above all things cause for humiliation, 
that the moral sentiment submits so easily to the condi- 



12 

tions of slavery. On this point we can indulge in some 
salutary remembrances. Step by step the power of slavery 
has enlarged its limits, and raagniified its constitutional 
privileges. It has succeeded in making the policy of the 
country one of deliberate compromise, till at last both the 
great parties acknowledge slavery to be a national interest, 
and freedom a subordinate principle, whose development 
must only be consistent with the safety of its proud antag- 
onist. From the annexation of Texas to the passage of 
the Fugitive Slave Bill, what concentration and rapidity 
of triumph! It was foretold to us in clear and anxious 
words, that the element of compromise was stamped upon 
the national policy solely for the aggrandizement of slav- 
ery ; and every step of its triumph was foretold. It was 
urged upon us that a doctrine of compromise, so far from 
bringing peace and settlement, was a doctrine fruitful of 
strife and agitation ; and that anything like a finality was 
impossible so long as the theory of slavery was respected. 
And all such prophecies will be rapidly fulfilled, until the 
theory of no compromise, and constitutional amendment, 
acquires political embodiment. Those who prefer the 
alternative of waiting till slavery dies out, will leave the 
alternative to their distant posterity. Slavery desires noth- 
ing better than to hear us continually saying that we are 
content to have it stop just where it is ; it will shift the 
stopping-place so long as our contented temper lasts. 
What keeps the country in continual agitation and alarm ? 
Is it the principle of freedom ? What makes all finalities 
obsolete and ridiculous ? Is it the antislavery sentiment ? 
Can we not see the settled purpose of slavery to make its 
life perpetual, and that for this chiefly it values the Union 
and the Constitution and the deferential North ? To pre- 



13 

serve and extend its political dominion, to press new sap 
out of the old compromises, or, with equal singleness of 
aim, to cut down compromises that have lost their sap, to 
make the Union the mighty protector of its auctions and 
coffles, its hunting expeditions, its daily horrors and op- 
pressions, — for this slavery trains its political sagacity, 
and consecrates the intellect and conscience of its children. 
We have been foretold this ; we live to see it verified. 
We are convinced that, whatsoever single measure fails, 
the great instinct against freedom will not succumb : with 
every opportunity, and when least expected, it will send 
forth its tenacious purpose, in far-reaching contempt of our 
vaunted finalities ; not simply desiring to be recognized 
and protected, but determined to prevail. Shall we trust 
it when we see its tact and resolution, — when we must 
know that every selfish impulse which enslaves the heart 
of man stimulates its efforts and keeps it sworn to self- 
defence and conquest? Our country is not excepted from 
the laws of retribution, and its wonderful vitality cannot 
be for ever braced against such a spreading malady. To 
say that peace and settlement will result from successive 
bargainings with slavery, is to say that health results while 
elements of death prey on the vital powers. 

We must try to change all this, and that right speed- 
ily. Freedom is the great interest and central principle of 
this republic. To establish and perpetuate the blessing of 
freedom was it ordained, and furnished with these oppor- 
tunities. To show that freedom is not only a universal 
right, but a necessity, did the counsel of God step west- 
ward, out of the traditions and encumbrances of Europe, 
to enjoy in this unpledged solitude another world. And 
this new domain, which has been kept for freedom, is com- 



14 

mitted to slavery, and this Union, which sprang out of a 
revolt against tyranny, is pledged to protect slavery ; and 
this Constitution, which was made to express the Divine 
object in the settlement of this republic, to guarantee the 
enlargement of liberty, and to formally vindicate the rights 
of man, turns out to be a slave-whip in the hands of those 
who live and thrive upon the wrongs of man ! And we, 
who have been divinely ordained to worship freedom, are 
to respect precisely that element in this free instrument 
which protects slavery ! There is the root of this criminal 
inconsistency ; and the conscience of freedom will have no 
peace till every slave element in the Constitution is re- 
pealed. That is the ultimatum of a united North, pledged 
with all its heart, with all its soul and strength and mind. 
Till that time comes, we shall all be held to our Antichris- 
tian bargain to return the fugitive. Against that bargain let 
this pulpit at least again pledge its profession of Christian 
discipleship, and let this Bible still seem greater and holier 
than the compromises of man. Though the floods of 
slavery cover all parties and obliterate all the ancient land- 
marks, may they rage around the bases of the Northern 
pulpits, and find that they are portions of the Rock of ages ; 
from their incorruptible security let the golden rule be pro- 
claimed to confound all compromises, and to inspire the 
hearts of men with horror at supporting injustice that they 
never would endure. 

Doubtless it seems as if nothing but compromise could 
ever be the policy of this republic. At the sound of the 
word Liberty, all kinds of obstructions and political contin- 
gencies occur to us. That is because the heart is not filled 
with the reality of liberty, and it does not appear to us, as 
it did to our fathers, something religious and imperative. 



15 

which makes us pledge to it our lives, fortunes, and sacred 
honor. The political shifts of the moment seem more 
imposing than an immortal principle ; and because we are 
afraid to repeal a compromise, we content ourselves with 
re-establishing it. But when we say that Freedom is chi- 
merical, we are withstanding God. He holds men respon- 
sible for freedom, as he does for faith and personal salva- 
tion. Freedom is God's project, the long-cherished inten- 
tion of the infinite wisdom. If our hearts were burning 
with a faith for freedom, then slavery would be chimerical, 
and everything in the organic law of the country that sup- 
ports it would be stricken out for ever. This shall be the 
policy of the future, to make the principle of freedom an 
element of personal religion, and to make its power aggres- 
sive, till it has put its enemy beneath its feet. Then slav- 
ery would indeed be remanded back to its natural limits, 
and kept within them, to meet the hour of its necessary 
retribution. And we should be free indeed, with the word 
Compromise stricken out of our papers and our hearts, and 
the hunter of slaves forbidden to call us his helpers. Re- 
peal of constitutional slavery shall be the politics of the 
future, around which all questions of less moment and of 
temporal regard shall stand in their due places, while liberty 
prevails. If nowhere else, then in the Church of God the 
true faith of the republic shall be cherished, and its ensign 
shall be held aloft. Here we demand to be liberated from 
slavery, for the Bible is our Constitution, and we will com- 
promise for nothing below its golden rule. On the pulpit 
steps at least the panting fugitive shall rest, and feel the 
Bible over him like the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
land. In churches shall independence be again proclaimed, 
and their bells shall again vibrate with the sacred word. 



16 

It shall be so interwoven with our creeds, that whoso ac- 
cepts religion accepts freedom, and is consecrated to the 
idea of a pure republic. The purity and justice of Jesus 
urge us to the unalterable resolution. We will make the 
halls of legislation clean and righteous ; its crowd of hang- 
ers-on shall be rebuked, and the air shall again circulate 
through its avenues ; we will strike the fetters from our 
printing-presses, and make the syllables of liberty to come 
out clear and bold ; we will make the Constitution one 
entire and perfect instrument of freedom, and then confi- 
dently ask the millions of the earth to behold the experi- 
ment of a successful republic. Do you care at all for this ? 
Are we among those who are content, so long as nothing 
interferes with thriving ? May God for ever prevent this 
country from achieving such success as that ! May a 
notion of such patriotism never pollute the hearts of our 
children ! If a man truly loves his country, he will love 
her health, and his effort will overleap the present moment 
to secure her future glory, founded upon consistency and 
liberty. Now may all the churches of the living God lift 
up their prayers for the day when our beloved country shall 
have in genuine success the reward of her obedience ! 



LEGAL ANARCHY. 



Let evert soul be subject unto the higher powers. — Romans xiii. 1. 
Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you 

MORE than unto GoD, JUDGE TE. — ActS iv. 19. 

The Christian theory itself is able to solve this appar- 
ent contradiction in Christian teaching ; and we shall find 
that it does this without damage to its reverence for human 
authority on the one hand, or for individual conscience on 
the other. Nothing can be plainer than the injunctions 
which we find in the New Testament to render obedience 
to an existing government, and to the powers with which 
it clothes certain persons in the name of law and justice. 
These injunctions are laid down without exceptions, and 
we cannot avoid perceiving that they are meant to contain 
a universal rule that guides human conduct through all the 
various developments of human government. And yet 
nothing also can be plainer than that the Apostles them- 
selves sometimes disobeyed human ordinances, whenever 
these conflicted with an overpowering sense of individual 
duty, and God seemed more clearly established in con- 
science than He did in law. They did not shrink from 
taking the consequences of this disobedience ; they were 
content to suffer violence rather than to violate the religion 
3 



18 

which clothed them with their great commission. Their 
doctrine supports the majesty and sufficiency of law, as 
the representative of Divine justice and the preserver of 
rights and order. Their conduct sometimes appeals from 
law to the divine fountain itself, and they excite within us 
a consciousness that an absolute principle of the Christian 
religion is a higher law, as many times as human authority 
contradicts it. The Apostles do not serve us with a table 
of exceptions to law; our knowledge that they ever thought 
it necessary to make exceptions is only implied in their 
doctrine, though sometimes expressed in their conduct. 
They proclaim the great principles of religious justice, 
and assume that human law shall labor to represent 
and embody them. Holding, therefore, themselves a Chris- 
tian theory of law, they unqualifiedly teach obedience to 
authority. 

And this is the principle which reduces the apparent 
contradiction between their doctrine and their conduct ; 
this principle, that their idea of law ivas a thoroughly Chris- 
tian one. It also explains, in a manner entirely consistent 
with our private sense of right, all the passages which 
counsel so strongly submission to the higher powers, — 
that is, to existing modes of human authority. If you 
take those passages in their connection, you will be struck 
to see how they all contain the Apostles' idea that law 
itself is righteous, and a terror only to the evil-doer. If it 
had appeared to them that the general tendency of human 
development were to make the law itself an evil-doer, we 
should not find them teachers of loyalty. But as they 
take for granted that the human mind is making a provi- 
dential effort to embody the Divine justice in governments 
and laws, notwithstanding the disturbances of human pas- 



19 

sion, they proclaim that men cannot enjoy the blessings 
of safety and progress unless they heartily support this 
system of law, which seeks to develop and protect the 
natural and social rights of man. 

Let us examine some of these passages, to show how 
clearly they contain this principle. " The powers that be 
are ordained of God : whosoever, therefore, resisteth the 
power, resisteth the ordinance of God." But how does 
this appear to be the case ? It appears, " for rulers are 
not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou 
then not be afraid of the power ? Do that which is good, 
and thou shalt have praise of the same. For he is the 
minister of God to thee for good." What a union of 
Christian authority and simplicity; how impressively it 
rebukes and admonishes human law, while it seems so 
innocently to confide in it! It is clear to us that Paul 
paid his loyalty to his private Christian conception of 
human authority as the minister of God. Do we not 
already see how he teaches, implicitly, the possibility that 
exceptions may arise ? His very theory, to which he 
summons unconditional obedience, justifies his conduct 
when he refused such obedience. " Wherefore ye must 
needs be subject," he says, " not only for wi'ath," i. e. not 
merely out of fear, "but also for conscience' sake"; be- 
cause authority, which is presumed to be a minister of 
God, cannot be supposed to conflict with private con- 
science. " For for this cause pay ye tribute also : for they 
are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very 
thing " ; — namely, to preserve peace and comfort, and to 
enforce justice against the evil. Here we come upon the 
local circumstance which suggested this doctrine of obe- 
dience. The new Roman converts felt that the truths 



20 

which had been awakened in their minds made them 
subjects of an invisible kingdom, and responsible only to 
the Spirit which was present in their hearts. And the 
same scruple which was started while the Saviour lived 
arose again, — whether they ought to pay taxes to a 
heathen government. The answer of the Saviour implied 
that disciples were to obey every ordinance of an existing 
government ; but when he added the clause, " Render to 
God the things that are God's," he vindicated his own 
religion for having abolished Paganism by the opposition 
of his disciples to the ordinances of idolatry and supersti- 
tion. They did resist the power and suffer the conse- 
quences, whenever the things of God became involved. 
By making a special case out of the tribute, Paul, follow- 
ing the doctrine of Jesus, instructs them to disobey no 
laws and regulations of a heathen government that do not 
involve their personal religion. Tribute may be an incon- 
venient and even an oppressive imposition ; yet they can- 
not refuse to pay it, when levied by the regular authority 
for the purpose of maintaining the general system of the 
laws. Unless that system is maintained, Paul has no 
safety as a Roman citizen, and his appeal to Csesar be- 
fore Festus would have been an empty phrase. Mark the 
distinction which Paul and all the early Christians make 
between paying taxes, which went in part to support a 
public idolatrous worship, and refusing to recant by assist- 
ing in such worship when threatened by the terrors of 
martyrdom. So can a Christian support the general pow- 
ers of any government, for the sake of its average of law 
and order, while he refuses homage and duty to its hea- 
thenism. All this is involved in Paul's doctrine that Law 
is the minister of God. 



21 

To be convinced of the unity of the apostolic doctrine 
upon this subject, let us examine some other passages 
that express it in the strongest manner, being careful 
not to wrench any single one from the natural connec- 
tion in which they all lie imbedded. In the First Epistle 
of Peter we read, " Submit yourselves to every ordinance 
of man for the Lord's sake ; whether it be to the king as 
supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by 
him for the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of 
them that do well." Here again recurs the same assump- 
tion that the law is a righteous standard, judging vicious 
men and opposing their demoralizing tendencies : " for so 
is the will of God that with well-doing ye may put to 
silence the ignorance of foolish men," i. e. that by cheer- 
fully obeying heathen ordinances you may refute those 
who ignorantly accuse you of acknowledging, as disciples 
of a new religion, no existing authority ; " as free, and not 
using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness." But sup- 
posing a heathen ordinance uses its legality for a cloak of 
maliciousness, — to persecute disciples and compel them to 
offer sacrifice to idols and to make their oaths to Jupiter, — 
then we find the early Christians refusing their obedience, 
because they saw that the law was attempting something 
beyond the punishment of evil-doers and for the praise of 
them that do well. They had all been reared in the con- 
science of the Saviour, who performed a Christian deed at 
a time that was illegal : they refused to perform an un- 
christian deed that authority had rendered legal. And 
they suffered the consequences ; " for this is thankworthy, if 
a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering 
wrongfully." The conscience towards God thus exalts 
itself above the secular authority, and Christianity quali- 



22 

fies its own doctrine of obedience, because the law itself 
contradicts the Christian theory from which its authority is 
derived. The disciple, for conscience' sake, will suffer, be- 
cause he can neither actively nor passively countenance a 
legal outrage of his moral sense. He takes no oaths before 
God, much less before the statue of the heathen Jove. 
And how plain the deduction is, that a disciple cannot be 
accessory in imposing upon others what he is willing to 
suffer from only because he is unwilling to obey. And 
finally, in the Epistle of Paul to Titus, he reiterates his 
Christian theory when he says, " Put them in mind to be 
subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, 
to be ready to every good work." It is so clear that he 
presumes the magistrate to be cooperating with society 
for every good work, that we are not surprised when Peter 
and John are put in mind not to obey magistrates who 
decree that they shall not disturb the public peace by 
preaching Christianity. In such a crisis Peter places the 
restraint of an enlightened conscience upon this doctrine 
of obedience, and asks them to judge whether it be right 
in the sight of God to hearken unto them more than unto 
God. And when the council summon him, saying, " Did 
we not straitly command you" not to propagate these 
principles, he and all the other Apostles answered and said, 
" We ought to obey God rather than men " ! How 
doubly winged with might is this right of conscience 
driven home to our hearts, when we see it wielded by the 
men who had been with Jesus, and had learned from him 
to thirst for righteousness and to obey the golden rule? 
How doubly careful should it make our conscience also to 
learn of Jesus, and to urge the rights of the individual soul, 
when he has made them known to us, with the force of 



LrT, 



23 

moral resistance, and, if it be necessary, with all the suffer- 
ings that power can inflict upon righteous disobedience ! 

Then from an examination of the Scripture doctrine, 
we find it pervadingly and strongly on the side of author- 
ity, but yet implicitly justifying Apostolic resistance, and 
assuming that exceptions may arise, making obedience to 
temporal authority sinful. But who, or what source of 
authority, shall decide, when such an exception has arisen ? 
It is plain from the Apostolic example, that our answer 
must be. Such a decision must be made by a conscience 
containing Christian principles. But, it is urged, by those 
who fear lest the authority of law become weakened, any 
conscience may pretend or imagine that it is inspired by 
Christian principles, and any man pronounce at pleasure 
that the law is vicious, and any crotchet may become an 
article of faith. Then the door is thrown wide open for 
all the disorders which breed in an agitated society, and 
there may be as many crises and revolutions as there are 
human idiosyncrasies. Any system of law is better than 
such a state of anarchy. Theoretically this is true : in fact 
it is nothing but an axiom to say that the restraint of an 
authority which is sometimes vicious is better than the 
dissolution of all society by the conflicting egotism of pas- 
sionate and half-enlightened men. Nobody doubts that 
truism. But practically this danger is always very remote 
from every form of government ; for two reasons ; — first, 
because the law-abiding instinct is so powerful in the mass 
of men, that they are very slow to suspect authority, and 
the genuine call of conscience, in cases of exception, moves 
them with great difficulty ; and secondly because, in every 
civilized government, the infliction of gross injustice is 
very rare compared with its general administration of 



24 

rights and order. Such is a practical answer to a possible 
objection. The mass of men have an inborn faith in law, 
and the object of government is protection, an average 
security, general rights, and justice. Here let me antici- 
pate rebutting evidence, which a famous case in history is 
always supposed to furnish. What made the French Rev- 
olution a period when all the follies that vanity could en- 
gender crowded each other in quick succession, in the 
names of truth and liberty, to be alternately quenched in 
the blood and tears of so many victims ? Because it is a 
dangerous thing to give men an opportunity to exercise 
the rights of conscience ? Far from it ; no case in history 
shows us so clearly the dreadful revenge of spiritual disso- 
lution that follows frivolous and arbitrary power. For a 
century had the throne been using its legality as a cloak 
for maliciousness, and philosophy, inoculated with this 
spirit of caprice, trifled with the laws of human faith, and 
robbed conscience of its pure and absolute Christian mate- 
rial. So when corrupt authority became suddenly extin- 
guished, the whirlwind was reaped where the wind was 
sown. Sanguinary egotism triumphed, not because there 
is danger in conscience, but because conscience had been 
demoralized by legal crime, and priestly apathy, and philo- 
sophical frivolity. Out from the foundations of a sensual 
throne, that had maintained for generations its consistency 
of vice, burst these wild waves that tossed so tumultuously 
before they found their rest. Such is the lesson of that 
period, in favor of the rights of a genuine and healthy con- 
science, by showing how organized corruption can educate 
a people to tread the steps of vanity and blood. Anarchy 
had been sitting on the throne long before it drove its 
phantoms, in derisive swiftness of succession, through the 



25 

blood-stained streets. What kind of anarchy is so in- 
wardly destructive, as that of a peaceful and triumphant 
iniquity? What disorder will compare with the orderly 
execution of a corrupt law ? What strikes so bitterly at 
the inner peace, what relaxes so fatally the sense of 
moral obligation, and what shakes so rudely our reverence 
for a just and interposing God ? What can we believe 
in, when disorder borrows all the elements and majesty of 
Law successfully to organize itself; when we see the pow- 
ers that are ordained of God using their holy ordination to 
make a sin prevail? If there luere danger in conscience, 
a thousand times better run that danger, than suffer the 
public sensibilities to be so shocked to see the Law, that 
servant of God, holding its tegis to shelter a corruption, 
and levelling its shining blade against the breast of justice. 
Can the preservation of material order atone for that? 
What shall it avail though streets and cities are never 
stirred from their propriety, if all the anarchy, impressing 
all the law, takes advantage of the public peace to wreak its 
will ? The greater the tranquillity that attends the com- 
mission of a wrong, the greater is the tumult and disorder 
in the very citadel of human life ! 

But it is not enough to conclude that practically the 
right of conscience in a law-abiding community does not 
lead to anarchy. For a genuine conscience, in its indigna- 
tion, may, like Peter in the garden, borrow the instru- 
ments of human passion to effect a righteous purpose. If 
Apostles have modified their doctrine of obedience by the 
exigency of a conscience, and if, therefore, we can find, in 
the last resort, no way for our individual salvation and 
no protection for truth except in the dictates of a Chris- 
tian moral sense, how shall we use it in those rare cases 
4 



26 

where the law violates equity and perpetrates what Jesus 
would condemn ? How shall we use our conscience ? In 
the first place, our opposition must never borrow the ele- 
ment of material force. We have no right as private citi- 
zens to maim or kill another citizen because he is in oppo- 
sition to our conscience. The right of self-defence does 
not extend far enough to establish our personal principles 
by violence; however much legal or illegal power may 
outrage ihem, our resistance must still partake of the nature 
of a principle, and either suffer or conquer as a moral power. 
Because, violence introduces the whole train of personal 
vices, revenge, pride, hatred, bloodthirstiness, into the ser- 
vice of the spiritual nature ; and the alliance is an abomi- 
nation to the temper in which a Saviour's truth was glori- 
fied. You never heard of violence being undertaken in a 
pervading sense of religious sanctity ; and men, struggling 
hand to hand and foot to foot, with white lips and flash- 
ing eyes, are never filled with the venerable dignity of the 
principles they may have soberly espoused. The animal 
must raven and triumph over all the spiritual powers, and 
indignation must sink down into fury, before a man can 
kill another man in the service of truth. That original ser- 
vice to which the genuine conscience bound itself has then 
been exchanged for the service of wrath ; Justice drops her 
scales, and with madly uplifted point, but with still blind- 
fold' eyes, rushes into the middle of a brawl. No wonder 
that violence has so often destroyed the causes that hate 
its agency, and have no communion with its bestial deeds. 
And especially in a republican form of government, where 
the voice of an enlightened people is the check to tyranny, 
and the grossest wrong might drop, with a silent vote, 
away to oblivion, violence defeats its purpose. It borrows 



27 

the spirit of the very outrage it is opposing, and turns it into 
its appropriate emblems of the club and sword. With these 
it aims blows, not against those who are responsible for 
originating legal outrage, but against those whom the pub- 
lic peace employs. Is it strange that the popular instinct 
hastens to array itself upon the side of material order, and 
the powers that be triumph once again over the power that 
ought to be ? It is hard enough to induce a law-abiding 
people to lift its conscience above its legal duty, and to 
acknowledge that an exception has arisen where obedience 
is unchristian. Where the work is going on of creating a 
public opinion upon conscientious grounds, the anarchy of 
a mob reacts in favor of the anarchy of an oppressive law. 
Violence lifts a Medusa's head, with all its dripping snakes, 
before the melting conscience, and freezes it again to obdu- 
racy. 

In the second place, we must oppose injustice by refus- 
ing to lend it personal aid and countenance. We must 
not be impressed into its service ; we must withdraw on 
every side, resolute to suffer penalty, but not to abet iniqui- 
ty, and leaving the law to perform its unholy function 
as it can. It shall be demanded of us in our serious mo- 
ments, during our uplifted prayers, and at the hour of 
death, if our hands or voices have ever aided men to vio- 
late the law of Christ. It shall be asked if we preferred to 
take our portion with the oppressed, or to strengthen by 
even the favor of a look the ofllce of the oppressor. Re- 
member that in another world than this we meet the lib- 
erated fugitive, where the pressure of authority can no 
longer serve us with a pretext ; and there shall God remind 
us of our Saviour's words, — " Inasmuch as ye did it not 
to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." Such 



28 

moments of triumphant conscience come to us before the 
day of our death, and the sorrow of Jesus seems repeated 
in the person of the fugitive, from whom the curse of man 
withholds the benefit of the golden rule. Can we counte- 
nance the power of law in inflicting upon him what would 
be worse to us than death ? Can we feel the fount of 
honor springing bravely and refreshingly within us, if our 
remotest act has been a link in his fetter ? Shall we use 
our liberty as a cloak for such maliciousness ? Let the 
law rather couple us with him, and send us both to the 
servitude from which he escaped with such exulting hopes. 
Surely, honor would find that fate sweeter than the remem- 
brance of having helped a man to kidnap ! Can law make 
us do that thing ? Let the gaol hide us from the sweet- 
ness of day, — let fines confiscate all our substance, before 
a whisper of our breath helps to push the slave back again 
into his misery. So aid us God, to abhor the office and 
duty of policemen to oppression. 

In the third place, we must oppose this iniquity by 
attempting to repeal it altogether. Dark and bitter is the 
future to us, liable to continual disgrace, teeming with the 
opportunities of agitation and disorder, full of moments 
that shall goad to unexpected madness, unless we are able 
to do this thing. The sense of loyalty in the heart of this 
people will be shattered by the successes of this unholy 
law. Remove the anarchy that lives by authority, before 
the anarchy of awakened passions fills the street. Preserve 
in the people their salutary sense of the sacredness of Law, 
and let them worship her as the unblemished servant who 
has received her ordination at the hands of God. Pull 
from her white attire, which adorns her as she sits in judg- 
ment, this bloody mantle which expedient men have thrown 



29 

around her, and let her garment have a hern that we can 
stoop to kiss with honor and devotion. Can we be any 
longer seduced to believe that the blessings of peace and 
Christian grace can reign among us, and that injustice can 
be a fountain of harmony ? Step by step has the power 
which governs us proceeded to the accomplishment of its 
deliberate policy, and every step has shown that the next 
has been premeditated ; it passes with equal indifference 
over solemn contracts made with man, and the still holier 
principles of Divine equity. It depends upon our loyalty to 
be its passive servant to the end. And it is now, as ever, 
the duty and office of the Christian pulpit to ask the peo- 
ple to judge whether it be right in the sight of God to 
hearken unto men more than unto God. The health and 
vigor of the public conscience stand affected, and the 
efficiency of public worship to keep alive the memory of a 
perfect Saviour, to preserve it from the stains of dissolute 
compromises, that it may be our guide and judge, a coun- 
sellor of Christian loyalty, a comforter to the oppressed. 
How far the shadow has crept over us while we have slept ! 
It lies across our altars, it would fain creep so high as the 
voice of the preacher, and touch his prophecy with para- 
lyzing chill. Shall we be loyal to the extent of extinguish- 
ing the source of true loyalty in an uncontaminated Gos- 
pel ? Where shall Law build her foundations, and where 
shall Justice plant her pillars, except upon that corner- 
stone ? It is a duty of religion, as well as a dictate of 
morality, to remove what brings so great a scandal upon 
the divine ordination of authority ; that the life of the peo- 
ple may tranquilly rest upon assurance of justice, that 
patriotism may be as large as duty, and that all our inher- 
itance of manliness from former times may be kept devoted 



30 

to the liberty which they secured, and be no longer held to 
service as slavery's protector. Into this solemn purpose 
the success of this or that party cannot enter : let not the 
fatal name of party be so much as mentioned in connec- 
tion with this sacred duty. Where the health of conscience 
and the purity of law are concerned, where a clear concep- 
tion of the Gospel's redeeming principles is involved, but 
one hope should light us on the single path which we must 
tread, that all men may come together into the power of 
one opinion, to demand repeal, and with single-minded- 
ness to demand it, till the voice grows loud enough to con- 
firm its claim. Do not let the side-whispers of party mingle 
with its clear and certain tone, for it is to proclaim a holy 
mission, being no less than that of reinstating the sanctity 
of law and withdrawing the countenance of a Christian 
people from the ways of the oppressor. If our heart be 
single, free from ambitions, and filled with the power of 
truth alone, we shall see Divine justice win a perfect tri- 
umph. Then at last we shall enjoy peace united with 
honor, because we shall have sealed up the source itself of 
anarchy. And let this be our prayer : O God, who hast 
brought us thus far in the path of our destiny, fill our souls 
with the heavenly light of a true purpose, that we may 
make our testimony in union and devotion, and cause our 
future to repay with righteousness thy mercy to us in the 
past. 



54 W 








5°. 









4* V»0 *' 






















•»bv* 



**0« 







• O 1 












, j> O • * ' « 1 







